


(We Were Just Kids) When We Fell In Love

by clarketomylexa



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: 12DaysofClexa, Christmas, Christmas Fluff, Day10, F/F, F/M, Skiing, and there was only one bed, clarke and lexa have history, ish, letitsnow, they are both useless but thats ok, they get snowed in
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 11:52:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17022120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clarketomylexa/pseuds/clarketomylexa
Summary: The ski trip couldn’t have come at a better time. Lexa was facing the sad prospect of staying at Berkeley alone over Christmas until Anya pulled through with a chalet in the Swiss alps that a contact through her firm was giving her the keys to.The only hitch is Clarke.Who perhaps is less of a ‘hitch’ and more of a ‘girl she hasn’t seen in six months since she went to grad school on the East Coast leaving Lexa and the feelings she waited too long to realise behind.’





	(We Were Just Kids) When We Fell In Love

**Author's Note:**

> based on the music video for ed sheeran's perfect because it's the perfect christmassy story but needed to be a little bit gayer

The ski trip couldn’t have come at a better time. With Costia in D.C. after their break-up—can you call it a break-up if all it was passing sex and a few nights out?—Lexa was facing the sad prospect of staying at Berkeley alone over Christmas until Anya pulled through with a chalet in the swiss alps that a contact through her firm was giving her the keys to.

The only hitch is Clarke.

Who perhaps is less of a ‘hitch’ and more of a ‘girl she hasn’t seen in six months since she went to grad school on the East Coast leaving Lexa and the feelings she waited too long to realise behind.’

She watches their train back out of the station with a low grumble and the squeak of steel along the tracks and tucks her chin into the lip of her thermal turtleneck and blows hot air into it. Beyond that the mountains are capped completely in snow and the sky is clear so that she doesn’t hold out much hope she will regain feeling in her fingers anytime soon. The forecast is for clear skies and twenty degrees until after Christmas—at least that’s what she pieced together from the intercom on the plane using high school German and Anya’s guidebook.

“Lexa.” Anya stands by the information booth, pamphlet in hand as she tries to decipher instructions from the thickly accented woman behind the desk. She waves Lexa over and Lexa pulls up the handle of her idling suitcase to comply, taking the credit card her sister holds out to her. “I’m going to get the rental,” Anya explains, “could you get us some coffee? Raven texted, their train was delayed and she hasn’t heard from Clarke yet.”

“My shout,” Lexa nods tucks the card back into Anya’s pocket.

“Extra hot,” her sister reminds her.

She rolls her eyes but nods in agreement, shivering in gratitude as she enters the coffee shop off the platform, adjusting the strap of her duffle bag over her shoulder and stamping off the snow her boots have collected. It’s warm inside. The wood panelled interior is decorated with garlands and twinkle lights and each window pane has a wreath—green and gold bows—hanging in the center just obstructing the endless view of snowy planes and the way the train tracks wind away into the landscape. She wrinkles her nose against the steady stream of hot air from the vent and side steps to avoid it.

“Lexa?”

The voice that interrupts her on her quest for coffee is familiar. It slips over her like a blanket that she takes eagerly and wraps around her shoulders as she swivels on her heel to answer the call and finds a blonde staring at her expectantly.

Clarke looks too similar to the last time Lexa saw her. She’s wearing a roomie grey sweater and jeans tucked into brown ankle boots. There’s a tartan scarf wrapped around her neck and gold hoops hidden by messy blonde waves—they’re mussed and Lexa can see the way strands frizz at the crown of her head in the light—and when she smiles when with rosy cheeks and eyes alight Lexa thinks she hasn’t felt as perfectly content in six months.

She doesn’t make it to get coffee. She doesn’t even think coffee was the objective here.

Anya is nothing if not the meddling big sister.  

Clarke waves her over to the table by the back window and slides out of the tartan booth to pull Lexa into a hug, flinging her arms around her neck and hooking her chin into Lexa’s shoulder through the feather down of her puffer vest like it hasn’t been months since they saw each other. Freeing her hands from her luggage, Lexa returns the embrace and curls her arms around Clarke’s shoulders. She smells the same—like the detergent she swore by when they were roommates and the shampoo she could never pronounce the name to—and it’s so familiar it makes Lexa dizzy.

“I miss you.” Clarke lets go to sink back down into the cushions and Lexa does the same, perching on the edge of the chair opposite.

“Me too,” she replies truthfully, tugging at the hem of her thermal—the apartment she shares with a classmate off campus feels oddly void of Clarke’s vivacious energy. It’s been six months since they graduated and Lexa is still trying to get used to the quiet and the way it now feels more akin to a museum than home. “I don’t know if my new roommate even has a personality.”

Clarke laughs, throwing her head forwards then raking her hair back from her face and resting her chin on her hand and Lexa feels the warmth of her smile.

“How’s Maryland?” She asks almost dreading the response.

Clarke nods. “Good,” she tucks her hair behind her ears, “cold. It’s not California but my Mom sent me with enough cold weather gear to clothe the US army so I won’t be going hypothermic anytime soon. Or that’s what she hopes,” she grins conspiratorially, “I haven’t told her about the shoddy radiator in my apartment yet.”

“Knowing Abby she’ll be over there building a fire in the living room.”

Clarke taps her nose. “Which is why I bought a space heater and assured her my building had superior central heating.” She cocks her head, still smiling and watches Lexa for a moment. “How’s Berkeley?” The softness in her voice strikes Lexa off guard. “When you didn’t drive down for Thanksgiving I thought you’d forgotten me. My Mom asked if she scared you away after last year.” She teases.

“I don’t think I could forget the girl who sings both parts of ‘Summer Nights’ to herself in the shower,” Lexa hastens to assure her. “And I don’t take missing out on Abby’s cooking lightly.”

“I know,” giggling, Clarke leans over to rest a hand on Lexa’s knee. “I was teasing,” she leans closer to admit it like a daring secret and Lexa stops breathing.

Wood sparks and burns in the fireplace at their backs but Lexa can feel the warmth of Clarke’s hand through the denim of her jeans tenfold. She fixates on the foam clinging to her top lip and when she catches Lexa staring—guiltily, with the soft smile Anya teases her about when she watches old movies—she raises a hand to her mouth self-consciously, cheeks flushing redder as her smile widens. She opens her mouth to say something when a ruckus behind them piques her interest and—features lighting up with the reflection of the firelight—she skips around the table, squealing: “they’re here!”

Lexa cranes her neck to see their friends, snow dusted and red cheeked. Octavia and Raven navigate their way through the maze of tables, arms extended and cheering, while Bellamy hangs back with Lincoln and the bags the girls promptly discarded. He pulls his beanie off his head, running a hand through his flattened curls as his sister scoops Clarke into a bear hug. Reaching out an arm, Clarke hooks Raven into the fray, then turns on Bellamy who gives her a light cuff over the head and calls her ‘little sister’. Regardless, Lexa’s chest feels tight and she looks away as Anya skirts the group to find her, clapping a hand on her shoulder.

“You set me up,” she hissed.

“And you didn’t get my coffee,” Anya quips, grinning. She has two pairs of keys hooked over her finger with tags hanging off them. “So I guess we’re both disappointed.” Following Lexa’s wandering eye-line, she looks over her shoulder to where Clarke is hiking her duffle bag onto her shoulder and speaking with animated gestures to Octavia who rolls her eyes. “Or maybe, just one of us.”

Lexa swats at her even as her cheeks heat from more than just their proximity to the wood burner and aware that Clarke is just feet away. “Shut up,” she hisses, shouldering her bags and fleeing after the others as they exit into the parking lot before her sister can say anything else incriminating.

They split themselves between the two rentals—Lexa, Anya, Clarke, Octavia and Raven in one car while the boys chivalrously offer to take the bags in the other  

Lexa stands by the open passenger seat door, one foot in the car while she fastens a pair of skis to the roof rack and when Clarke finishes tying Bellamy’s snowboard off, their hands brush and she slides her fingers under Lexa’s and squeezes, winking in a way that makes Lexa nostalgic and wanting for the nights they would spend curled up in either one of their twin beds watching Netflix on Clarke’s laptop. When they would fall asleep like that and Lexa would wake up at two a.m. with her nose tucked into blonde hair and Clarke’s leg thrown over her hip and she would have to extract herself like she was dismantling a bomb for fear of waking her roommate who had an eight a.m. lecture the next morning.

“When are you two going to talk?” Anya hisses at her over the center console as Lexa slides into the passenger seat. She watches her sister plug the keys into the ignition and adjust the rear-view with her lip tucked under her teeth.

“About what?” She feigns innocence easily—the way her cheeks heat, not so much.

Clarke, Octavia and Raven pile into the backseat, Clarke in the middle, warming her hands under her thighs and complaining about the bitter cold that had chapped all of their cheeks and lips. She catches Lexa’s eye in the rear-view as she blows warm air onto her frigid fingers and grins.

Putting the car into reverse Anya huffs an irritated sigh, pointedly ignoring the way Lexa and Clarke have locked eyes.

“About that.”

* * *

The chalet, like it’s neighbours, sits nestled in the midst of the snowy slope—all bronze timber, glass and stone with wide, arching windows proudly overlooking the town they have just left. There’s a wreath of thick green branches and holly berries fastened to the hulking front door by a red, velvet bow that Clarke can see as they crawl up the hill of the driveway, grateful for whoever cleared the roads because the climb to the house is a near forty-five degree angle and she can think of nothing worse than hauling a ton of ski gear up the slope in the snow.

As it is she dreads vacating the warmth of the rental now that the heating is cranked up enough to colour her cheeks pink—at least that what she maintains has her in hot flushes and not the way Lexa keeps making tentative eye contact with her in the rear-view, like she is wanting but uncertain.

An illicit iota of her can’t wait until she can pull herself aside while they are unpacking and coax out the soft Lexa she knows away from the prying, teasing eyes of their friends. Privately, she finds nothing more endearingly frustrating than the way Lexa has it drilled into her thick head that admitting her feelings would lead to a full scale societal collapse. Through their four years of being roommates, they had come to know the smallest intricacies of each other and still, she found Lexa averting her eyes, pink burning in an arch on her cheeks when she would emerge from the bathroom partially dressed or wrapped in a towel. It took everything within Clarke not to take the brunette by her shoulders and shake her until she kissed her, but it took even more not to bite the head off one of their friends every time they made a snide remark about it.

Octavia ribs her—hard and pointedly and Clarke comes reluctantly out of her reverie, tucking her fists into the cuff of her sweater as she vacates the backseat. She wraps her arms around herself, nosing into her scarf as she wanders over to the group the others are forming between the cars as Anya hikes up to the front door, key in hand. There is a pool further up where the balcony tapers off into the slope, and a spa inlaid into the stained wooden decking.

Anya fiddles with the lock the hollers when she has the door open and propped against the heavy iron doorstop and Clarke extracts her fingers from her sweater to help the boys heave the bags out of the trunk.

“What do you think, Clarke?” Bellamy nudges her as she goes to grab her duffle.

“What?”

“How much snow do you think this place gets?’

“Enough for you to fall on your ass in it tomorrow,” she replies smartly, ducking when he lunges at her in retribution.

“O’s the one who can’t snowboard,” he teases, grinning smugly at his sister who flips him off as she follows her boyfriend into the chalet knowing full well she is better than all of them combined. 

Clarke flicks his ear. “I’ll be the judge of that, Mr. No-Coordination.” She slings the strap of the duffle her ski gear is folded neatly into her shoulder, stopping in her path to the house when she sees Lexa, fists wound deep in the pockets of her quilted vest as she takes in the view down the mountain. Her cheeks are red and she shivers in the cold, starting when Clarke claps a hand on her shoulder.

“Now who’s going hypothermic,” she teases.

“I’ve got thick skin,” Lexa assures her, flashing a smile.

Clarke only shrugs happily and nestles her head in the cradle of the brunette’s shoulder, her nose finding a home in the soft knit of her scarf as she clings close to give off warmth.

“It’s good to be out of the city,” she mumbles through the thick wool.

“Better than my original holiday plans.”

Adjusting herself, Clarke peers up at Lexa. “Were you going to watch ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ in an empty apartment?” She takes the silence as a confirmation and jabs merciless fingers into the web of Lexa’s ribs over the padding of her vest until Lexa shrieks and squirms away. “Hermit,” she accuses grinning. “Come on,” she slips her fingers under the sleeves of Lexa’s vest and pulls, “we’re going to freeze.”

The others have disappeared inside by the time they find their suitcases and clamber upstairs. The door closes with a heavy thunk behind them and Clarke loosens the way her scarf is tightly wound around her neck—appreciating the immediate warmth she finds thawing out her bones.  

Inside, the chalet is all high ceilings, exposed beams and open plan living spaces. A glass chandelier hangs from the ceiling above the dining room table across the room, sprawling grey sofas form a rectangle of seating in front of the inlaid fireplace that Lincoln is on his knees stacking kindling into.

Next to the fireplace is a tall fir, decorated with coordinated ornaments—red silver, gold and glass with gold antlers nestled between and tree-lights strung through thick branches. It’s taller that Bellamy, making a valiant effort to brush the high ceiling but falling short, while on the mantelpiece, tendrils of garlands dandle alongside knitted stockings.

Clarke lets her duffle slide off her shoulder, basking in the luxury of the floor to ceiling windows that follow the shallow slant of the roof that take up the whole front wall of the chalet. Through them she can see the resort, nestled in a valley at the foot of the mountain they are perched a quarter of the way up.

“There’s two more up here, and a bunk room.”

Craning her neck, Clarke sees Octavia hanging over the balcony from the mezzanine— newly freed of her coat, scarf and beanie. In the kitchen, Anya stows the keys in the ceramic dish on the counter and picks up the guest book from where it is on the edge of the dining room table, flicking through it for instructions.

“I already told you I’m taking one of the ones down here,” she informs Octavia.

“Lincoln and I are in the one with the en suite then,” Octavia calls. “And Bellamy is in the double downstairs.” She looks at Raven in pointed silence who is busy fiddling with the knob of the binoculars set up on a stand by the window.

“I’m not sleeping in a bunk bed,” she says decisively. “I can take one of the double’s up there.”

“Which means Clarke and Lexa are rooming,” Octavia grins gleefully, making a point not to make eye contact with the affronted face Clarke pulls. “Sorry,” she shrugs as she descended the stairs, “you snooze you lose.”

Lexa sets her suitcase down by the back of one of the sofas, peeling off her vest and laying it neatly over the back of the chair until she is stripped down to her thermal and jeans but no less warm. “It’s fine—” she tries, cheeks burning visibly, and Clarke wants nothing more to run her hands over her arms and make quiet jests until Lexa is no longer put on the spot as Clarke knows she feels she is. She hates the way her friends tease them.

Eloquent as ever, Raven doesn’t seem to share the same sentiments. “They practically lived in each other’s beds in college,” she says, adjusting the zoom on the binoculars and checking the picture they show. “They won’t mind.”

Clarke smiles tightly. “Thank you, Raven.” She says. “We can take it from here.” She heaves her suitcase up the stairs before they can say anything more to make her want to shrivel out of quiet embarrassment.

The mezzanine holds a library, a cow-skin rug and another, smaller tree with the same colour scheme. Clarke runs her fingers over the intricate details of an ornament as she passes through to find the open door at the end of the hall.

It’s roomy—tucked under the eaves of the roof but big enough for the California king, an armchair, ottoman and the desk and chair in one corner by the open connecting door that leads to Raven’s claimed room. She shuts it firmly.

“I can take the bunk room if you’d rather?”

Lexa appears in the doorway with her bags, looking ready to leave at the smallest word from Clarke. Despite the fierce and stoic demeanour to she puts into the world, she is just as gentle as Clarke remembers—hyper aware of what everyone else wants, and needs except for herself. It takes everything within her not to smack her upside the head.

Instead, Clarke smiles and waves it off with a firm, “don’t be stupid.” She pulls Lexa inside and makes her put down her bags. “We can put up a pillow wall if it really bothers you though?” She grins, knowing the answer will be no. They both find too much comfort in each other for that.

There is another question that has been tugging at the edge of her consciousness though, ever since she received her Johns Hopkins acceptance letter with graduation day looming ever nearer, cruel-faced and leering at them. She waits until Lexa has the top two drawers of the chest open and is in the process of methodically arranging her folded clothes into them before asking.

“Are we okay?”

Lexa stops, fingers playing with the hem of a tee. “What do you mean?”

“Us,” she waggles a finger between them. “We’re still… _us_ right? You haven’t missed Thanksgiving in three years,” she explains softly. Some of the best holiday memories have been making the drive up to Sacramento from Berkeley with Lexa in her Dads old Volkswagen Jetta after they had become roommates and fast friends in Freshman year. She couldn’t explain the empty feeling in her chest when Lexa has texted to say she wouldn’t be able to make it this year. “I don’t want things to have changed just because we’ve graduated.”

In actual fact she wants everything to change but she leaves that particular titbit out—keeps it safe in the slot in her ribs next to her heart.   

“Of course,” Lexa doesn’t look at her properly, the contours of her face hidden behind a curtain of wayward hair but she nods adamantly and Clarke is satisfied enough. Six months is a long time, she supposes.

“Good,” she decides, leaving her own bag, unzipped in the bottom of the closet—Lexa is the only person she knows who actually unpacks on vacation. “I’m going to see whether Raven has the eggnog on tap yet.”

“Clarke.” She stops in the doorframe at Lexa’s behest, fingers knitting into the notch for the lock. “I really do miss you,” Lexa says, meeting her eyes and Clarke wants to melt into the familiar warmth she sees in them, finally. She lets the feeling grow malleable and stretches it out over her bones until she’s bathing in it and smiles.

She doesn’t think of the unspoken meaning she hopes is somewhere in the words for the rest of the night—even as they order pizza from the one shop in town that delivers, eating them from the boxes lined up along the twelve-seater dining room table with Lexa dutifully eating the crusts Clarke turns her nose up at. She ignores where it sits lodged in her chest as she shoves the boxes in the trash when they are done and watches Lincoln turn the tree lights on and stoke the fire, and when she finds the tasselled edge of the blanket Lexa has commandeered for herself on the two seater, big enough that when she sits back her socked feet don’t touch the ground and she resolves to tuck them under herself as Octavia feeds ‘Miracle of 34th Street’ into the DVD player refusing to think of the echoey thing in her chest.

But by the time she is pyjama clad though, it has grown into something so blatantly obvious that it knocks on the underside of her skull, becoming unbearable to ignore as Lexa emerges from the bathroom, wrapped in plaid pyjama pants and the baggy comfort of her oversized Stanford hoodie.

Clarke thinks she has overindulged in Raven’s ‘special’ eggnog, because she rants as she does a round of the room, about the classic versus the remake of the Christmas classic they have just watched, before climbing into bed next to Clarke. She lays her head on her pillow and Clarke does the same, shuffling to the inner edge of hers.

Lexa smells like the scented soap in the bathroom and faintly of mint when she talks, and it’s all Clarke can do to stop her mind from straying to less innocent things. But she must catch the blonde staring—the way her lips move across her words is a sin unto its own, Clarke is sure—because she stops mid-sentence and ducks her chin into her pillow to catch her wandering eyes.

“Clarke, about what you said earlier,” she hums, when she is sure Clarke is paying attention. Clarke feels the knocking in her head grow more insistent ass he nods, feeling the aching hesitancy curling into Lexa’s chest, catching it and willing it away.  

“What if we are changing,” she says eventually.

“In what way?” Clarke asks, practically holding her breath.

She watches Lexa open her mouth then close it again, shaking her head into her pillow. “I think I’m tipsy,” she admits, cheeks reddening and the conversation is effectively over.

Clarke fixes on a smile. “I wasn’t going to say anything she giggles softly.

“I forgot how liberal Raven is with the rum.”

“Better hope you’re not too foggy headed in the morning or I’ll kick your ass on the slope.”

Lexa rolls onto her back and settles an arm over her eyes. “In your dreams,” she promises.

* * *

When Lexa wakes she is draped in Clarke.

There is a leg hooked over her hip and an arm thrown across her chest and for a split second her chest seizes at the thought she is back in their old dorm room and by the angle of the sun, she is late to class. But the ceiling is exposed oak beams instead of very nearly cracking plaster.

Clarke shifts groggily on her chest, extracting herself from the folds of the comforter and faux-fur blanket they pulled up in the night with liquid movements until she is back on her own pillow—barely, legs still tangled as they play footsie under the blankets.

“You’re comfier than I remember,” she whispers without a hint of embarrassment, reaching out to tuck a lock of hair over Lexa’s ear.

Lexa has always envied her ability to do that.

Clarke takes things as they come—she doesn’t over think whether they are ‘right’ or now, and part of Lexa thinks the skill will come as part of getting over the hollow ache in her chest that emerges whenever Clarke so much as steps into her vicinity.

“You’re bonier than I remember,” she replies, taking the light hit to the shoulder.

“You missed me,” Clarke reminds her, pointedly.

Lexa swallows. “I did.”

Clarke is close enough that every time she breathes, Lexa can feel it on her cheeks. She feels safe in the cocoon of their bedroom tucked away under the eaves. Downstairs cutlery clinks with breakfast preparations—Anya has always been an early riser—but here she can pretend the day hasn’t started yet. Clarke’s toes curl around her calf and Lexa wants to tell her everything.  

She wants to tell her that she missed Thanksgiving because after the kiss they shared in Malibu, tipsy on wine coolers on their last night of spring break—the kiss that Clarke didn’t acknowledge in the morning—she cared too much to put them both in a position they didn’t want to be in.

It was self-preservation.

It still is.

“Oi roomies!”

At the sound of Raven thumping a fist against the bedroom door, they spring apart. Clarke sits up, rubbing her eyes as she curses while Lexa sinks into the folds of the sheets.

“What?”

“Coffee’s up. Chop chop.”

Grunting, Clarke swings her legs out of bed. She drags a hand through her hair, combing it away from her face as she rummages in her suitcase for a sweater and pulls it on over her pyjama shirt, then shimmies her pants down her legs and steps into sweatpants. Lexa waits until she is occupied before following suit.

Anya is on the balcony when she gets downstairs, wrapped in a scarf and coat and sipping coffee out of a thick ceramic mug. She comes inside when Lexa crosses the living room, the gust of wind that she lets in making them shiver, and sidles up to Lexa as she pours herself a coffee out of the pot.

“How did you sleep?” She asks into the rim of her cup.

Lexa eyes her sideways. “Don’t start.”

Octavia and Lincoln are clinched in the armchair by the fireplace, his hands trapped between her fingers as she plays with them idly.

Clarke sits cross legged on the love seat opposite them with a bowl of milky cereal in her lap.

“It snowed last night.”

“Good skiing today, then.” Lincoln says.

Octavia snorts. “First one to fall on their ass buys shots.”

They head out after breakfast.

In her boots and waterproof overalls on over her thermal, Lexa holds Clarke’s skis as the blonde pulls her jacket on over her thermals. She has a beanie on and her hair out, her goggles sitting on her forehead and they swap when Lexa unties her own anorak from around her waist and pulls it on, freeing her hair from the collar with gloved hands.

“When was the last time you got on a snowboard?” Clarke nudges her as they trudge up the slope of the road where the ski field car park and cable car lies. It had been a unanimous agreement that it would be pointless taking the car half a mile up the road.

“Junior Year,” Lexa estimates. That was the last time she accompanied Clarke’s family to Colorado on winter break—an experience unto its own really, as they had stayed with her extended family in their house outside Aspen and had spent Christmas wrangling her cousins and keeping eggnog out of underaged hands. Thus, Lexa’s first _real_ family Christmas had been a far cry from the one her and Anya usual celebrated.

Clarke pulls a worried face, curling her lips up over her teeth and Lexa goes to elbow her. “I’ll be fine,” she insists, “it’s like riding a bike.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

They pay for the cable car and split themselves between two, Octavia and Raven pull Clarke with them as they load their gear into the first and she shoots Lexa an apologetic glance as it closes on them which the brunette waves away, helping Bellamy stack their skis in the bottom of their car.

Halfway up the line, Clarke turns back, hands splayed against the window as she presses her forehead to the glass. Lexa sees her smile goofily at her and checks that Anya is talking firm logistics with Lincoln before poking her tongue out in retaliation to which Clarke clasps a hand over her chest and pretends to faint at the sight of Lexa not being composed for once.

_‘The dramatics.’_

She mouths.

_‘You love me.’_

She sees Clarke mouth back.

Lexa snaps back in her seat before her cheeks can start to colour, digging her chin into the high neckline of her thermal where it pokes out from beneath her anorak and begs her sister by telepathy not to make a comment about it.

“And what about you, Lexa,” Bellamy turns to her. “Are you going public or private once you graduate.”

“Lexa’s a social justice warrior,” Anya snorts. “She’ll go ‘wherever the people need her’.”

Lexa rolls her eyes. “Cynic,” she accuses but Anya takes it in her stride.

“No one said I’m not.”

The car draws to the top of the and an attendant helps them out.

Lexa tucks her skis under her arms and takes her poles between gloved hands, trudging through the top layer of powdered snow to where Octavia, Clarke and Raven are stood at the top of the shallow beginners slope.

“Bell!” Octavia hollers, lowering her goggles over her eyes. “Race you.”

The two take off down the slope, followed by Anya and Lincoln, and Raven who tells them to ‘use protection’ before hollering at the pair to wait up, leaving Lexa peering pointedly at the tips of her boots where they peek out of the powdery snow while Clarke sorts her layers out.

She lets her skis fall to the snow and clips her boots in, looking back at Lexa to stares at the slope, chagrined. “Coming?”

Lexa nods, gingerly following suit and sticking her poles into the snow, propelling herself forwards experimentally.

“Here,” Clarke unclips her boots and kicks her skis aside, moving so she’s in front of Lexa facing her, one pole out horizontal. “Hold on.”

“What?”

“Catch up lesson,” Clarke explains, grinning. With her toe she manoeuvres Lexa’s skis until they are parallel to each other and pulls. “This to go,” she says as she stumbles backwards, bringing Lexa’s weight with her until they are moving at a stilted, steady pace, then, she toes the skis inwards until they create a ‘V’ shape. “This to stop.”

Lexa practices the movements a few times on her own and Clarke slides her boots back into her skis. “Come down her,” she points with her pole to where the shallow slope flattens out by the fence line and Lexa eyes the distance. “It’s not that far, I promise,” Clarke laughs. “And if you fall I won’t tell.” She propels herself forwards. “I’ll even take one for the team and buy drinks,” she throws back over her shoulder, grinning smugly.

Setting her brow in determination, Lexa follows.

**Author's Note:**

> come talk to me on tumblr if you want to ([@clarketomylexa](https://clarketomylexa.tumblr.com/)) otherwise thanks for reading!


End file.
